During long duration human space flights in space crafts, human habitation in extraterrestrial habitats, such as the International Space Station, and in terrestrial applications such as commercial aircrafts, remote instrument enclosures, or a submarine, clean air is required for occupants such as astronauts, equipment, passengers or submarine crew. Maintaining cleanliness of the air requires filtration systems that have a long working life and are designed to filter several decades of different particle sizes. When a large dust load and a wide range of particle sizes are to be removed, it is a common commercial practice to use a multi-stage filtration system with a first stage that removes the largest particles. Since the largest fraction of dust in the air stream reduces the life of a filter, a pre-filter for large particles may be beneficial to protect the more expensive or critical filters designed for higher efficiencies and smaller particles.
However, the biggest challenge for long duration deployment is the difficulty of maintenance during service. For example, maintaining of the filter may be limited based on limited availability of the crew, crew time, and/or resources. Another challenge is to limit the footprint and payload while still providing the flexibility needed for the system to be tailored to the filtration needs of any mission or commercial application. Current space or commercial filtration devices do not provide a multi-year life or a small payload required for space.